6 reasons ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit’ could rescue the film series

Look at that: my first feature for the Today Show entertainment website!

After more than a decade of desk duty, Tom Clancy’s famed fictional CIA agent is back on the big screen Friday in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

Ryan’s been played by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck, and he’s fought his way through submarine diplomacy, the heat of the Cold War and South American drug cartels. But forget all that — the character is getting a complete reboot. In the new movie, he’s played by Star Trek movie veteran Chris Pine, and he’s working in a changed world informed by the tragedy of Sept. 11.

Can a Cold War patriot reinvent himself as an American hero for a new millennium? Odds are in Ryan’s favor. Here’s why.

Chris Pine’s a good fit for the role
Best known as young Captain Kirk, Pine is 34 but his baby face makes him look younger, and he has a brashness that sets him off from previous actors in the role. “Jack Ryan already somehow suggests a kind of an oak tree — something yeoman-like,” director Kenneth Branagh told The Huffington Post. “And Chris Pine — that six-foot-two, blue-eyed fit guy — just feels like the right guy.” No arguments here.